The seasonal adjustment in the last week's sub 400k initial claims is starting to water out, and the resulting jump in initial claims from 388K to 409K was to be expected. Of course, last week's 388K was revised as always to a worse reading of 391K. More importantly, as we have been noticing for the past 3-4 weeks, the Unadjusted claims continue to surge, and in the last week jumped by 52k to 577,279, nearly 170k more than the Seasonally Adjusted number. Those on continuing claims declined from 4,150,000 to 4,103,000 even as the NSA number again surged from 4,116,779 to 4,390,661. Lastly, those on extended claims were a wash as those on EUCs dropped by 134K while those on extended claims jumped by 110K.
Which brings us to the final 2010 BLS data fudging chart. We urge readers to calculate the probability that initial claims are revised in an adverse fashion the week following on 44 of 52 occasions, and favorably on a whopping 2 out 52 purely by chance.